---------- Forwarded message --------- De : Daniel Gregory <daniel.greg...@uni-tuebingen.de> Date: lun. 8 févr. 2021 à 11:15 Subject: Online Conference - Dreaming and Memory To: <philo...@liverpool.ac.uk> Cc: Kourken Michaelian <michaelian.kour...@gmail.com>
Dear all, As previously advertised, an online conference on the theme of *Dreaming and Memory* will take place on *Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 February 2021*, co-hosted by the Philosophy of Neuroscience research group at the University of Tübingen and the Centre for Philosophy of Memory at the University of Grenoble Alps. The schedule, in Central European Time, is as follows: *Monday 22 February* 8:50 – Introduction 9:00 – 10:15: *Manuela Kirberg* (Monash): Mechanisms of (dream)bizarreness: unconstrained memory processes and spontaneous cognition 10:15 – 10:30: Break 10:30 – 11:45: *Kourken Michaelian* (Grenoble Alps): True, authentic, faithful: Accuracy in memory for dreams 11:45 – 13:30: Lunch 13:30 – 14:45: *Matthew Soteriou* (Kings’): Temporal perspective in dream and memory 14:45 – 15:00: Break 15:00 – 16:15: *Sven Bernecker* (Cologne & California, Irvine): Dreaming, imagining, remembering *Tuesday 23 February* 9:00 – 10:15: *John Sutton* (Macquarie): ‘Never did I discover a memory in dreaming’: Halbwachs on mental work, social frameworks, and memory images 10:15 – 10:30: Break 10:30 – 11:45: *Daniel Gregory* (Tübingen): You cannot remember the past during dreams but you can relive it 11:45 – 13:30: Lunch 13:30 – 14:45: *Markus Werning* (Ruhr University Bochum) & *Kristina Liefke* (Ruhr University Bochum): Remembering Dreams: Parasitic Reference in Memories of Non-Veridical Experiences 14:45 – 15:00: Break 15:00 – 16:15: *Michael Barkasi* (York): The nonimmersive feeling of pastness as the phenomenal manifestation of remembering Attendance is free but we ask that you register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSen_3sDyZTJX2ATOk0YdKhar_IMzTmEZGbPHT3dbroXqy0g-g/viewform?usp=pp_url Zoom link: https://univ-grenoble-alpes-fr.zoom.us/j/98036945093?pwd=ZUJwMzZZcmdnbmd6MjF5cHpLUWZSZz09 Meeting ID: 980 3694 5093 Passcode: 706468 Conference website: http://phil-mem.org/events/2021-dreaming.php Abstracts for talks are provided below. Best wishes, Daniel Gregory Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow University of Tübingen Kourken Michaelian Director, Centre for Philosophy of Memory University of Grenoble Alps *Abstracts* *Manuela Kirberg* (Monash): Mechanisms of (dream)bizarreness: unconstrained memory processes and spontaneous cognition I will explore the question how to capture the inconsistent, unlikely and impossible features and combinations of dream phenomenology and their neurocognitive origin on a conceptual and empirical level; a question that remains vigorously debated among cognitive scientists and philosophers. I propose that (dream)bizarreness can be understood as common feature of spontaneous offline simulations occurring across the sleep-wake cycle. Bizarreness seems therefore to emerge from mechanisms that underly spontaneous cognition independent of the behavioural states of sleep and wakefulness. The occurrence of different types of unusual dream elements can be linked to the defining characteristics of spontaneous thought as being dynamic, unconstrained, (hyper)associative and highly variable in content. Additionally, dreaming can be understood as one kind of constructive episodic simulation where phenomenal dream content arises from a spontaneous and flexible recombination of episodic details of past experiences resulting in novel simulations of past, future or imaginative and sometimes even absurd scenarios. Unusual combinations can be linked to memory mechanisms, resulting from a complex process that involves not only the consolidation of memory but a transformation of past experiences in the form of unconstrained, associative simulations. Therefore, dream bizarreness can be conceptualised as an inevitable subsidiary effect that emerges on the phenomenal level from underlying unconstrained memory and associative thought processes. *Kourken Michaelian* (Grenoble Alps): True, authentic, faithful: Accuracy in memory for dreams What is it to remember a dream accurately? This talk will argue that neither of the two available conceptions of accuracy in memory, truth and authenticity (Bernecker 2010), enables us to answer this question. A third conception of accuracy is needed: a memory of a dream is accurate when it is “faithful” to the dream. In addition to memory for dreaming, the talk will apply the notion of faithfulness to memory for imagining, hallucinating, and remembering. *Matthew Soteriou* (Kings’): ‘Temporal perspective in dream and memory’ When we are awake, we occupy a temporal perspective, and while occupying that temporal perspective we can simultaneously represent a distinct temporal perspective that we don’t occupy. For example, when we episodically recollect some past event, we occupy a temporal perspective on that past event and simultaneously represent a distinct temporal perspective on the event which we don’t then occupy. But how are our capacities to occupy and represent temporal perspectives affected when we dream? For example, are there dreams in which we merely represent, and fail to occupy, a temporal perspective? In this talk I will be addressing these questions and discussing their relevance to our understanding of self-representation and the first-person perspective in memory and dreams. *Sven Bernecker* (Cologne & California, Irvine): Dreaming, Imagining, and Remembering Descartes famously argued that the possibility that we are dreaming undermines knowledge of the world around us. The paper challenges two assumptions of the dream argument. According to the first assumption, the dreamer cannot know that they are dreaming. According to the second one, dreams involve false or unjustified beliefs. The paper goes on to suggest a criterion for distinguishing dream experiences from remembered waking experiences. *John Sutton* (Macquarie): ‘Never did I discover a memory in dreaming’: Halbwachs on mental work, social frameworks, and memory images In The Social Frameworks of Memory (1925), the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs systematically contrasts dreaming and remembering. He argues that memory is a complex socio-cognitive achievement involving ‘mental work’ on the basis of norms and shared notions. If remembering was, as Bergson thought, a purely subjective escape from society, it would be like dreaming - fragmentary and unmoored. Integrating phenomenology and developmental evidence, Halbwachs argues that there are no rich or coherent memories in dreams. I assess the theoretical and historical significance of these ideas in our era of situated cognitive theory, discussing links to contemporary debates about mental time travel, childhood amnesia, relations between dreams and imagination, and the role of social norms in memory. *Daniel Gregory* (Tübingen): You cannot remember the past during dreams but you can relive it There are two leading theories on the nature of dreams: one is that dreams are a kind of hallucination; the other is that dreams are a kind of imagination. I will suggest that it is not possible to have memories during dreams if dreams are hallucinations and that it is probably not possible if dreams are a kind of imagination. I will allow that it is possible to have a dream which corresponds very closely to a past experience and that you might even recognize this upon waking and recalling the dream, but I will claim that such dreams nonetheless do not count as memories. *Markus Werning* (Ruhr University Bochum) & *Kristina Liefke* (Ruhr University Bochum): Remembering Dreams: Parasitic Reference in Memories of Non-Veridical Experiences Episodic memories are widely assumed to be factive: To say that someone remembers something presupposes that the ascribed mnemonic content is true and that the descriptions used to express it have existing referents. In this respect, the verb “remember” resembles the ordinary use of perceptual verbs such as “see” and “hear”. The causal theory of memory (Martin & Deutscher 1966, Bernecker 2010) promises to explain the reference of memories in two steps: (i) In the original perception, a causal chain leads to a categorical representation of the perceived object. (ii) The reference relation thus obtained is passed from perception to the event of remembering by a memory trace that extends the causal chain and transmits categorical representational content. Theories that deny the need for a content-preserving memory trace, such as simulationism (Michaelian 2016) and trace minimalism (Werning 2020), prima facie fare worse in explaining the reference relations of memories. However, this assessment changes when memories of non-veridical experiences, such as dreams, are also considered. Here, causal links to their (counterfactual) intentional objects are typically absent. Nevertheless, anaphoric reference relations seem to exist between the memory and the dream content. Correctness conditions apply: It is possible to misremember what one dreamed. Following Blumberg (2018), we develop a parasitic account for the reference relations of mnemonic content: Memories are referentially fully dependent on the original experiences, be they veridical or not. It suffices to single out the event of experience through an appropriate causal link to the event of remembering. A transfer of categorical representational content is not necessary. The resulting view is in accordance with trace minimalism. *Michael Barkasi* (York): The nonimmersive feeling of pastness as the phenomenal manifestation of remembering It’s one thing for an environmental interaction to leave an impression on an organism which affects subsequent behavior or information processing (memory trace). It’s quite another for the organism to remember that interaction. Plausibly, remembering, as exemplified in human episodic recall, requires the organism’s cognitive machinery to use a memory trace as a stand-in for the past event. This criterion is functional: It specifies remembering in terms of its functional role within a cognitive system. How does this functional role relate to both phenomenology and neurobiology? In this talk, I suggest that dreams provide an interesting dissociation between memory traces and remembering, and thereby provide insights into the phenomenology and neurobiology of remembering. Specifically, I argue that both dreams and waking episodic recall involve the reactivation of memory traces and are both accompanied by a feeling of pastness. But dreams (or their neural substrates) are not used as stand-ins for the past, and this functional difference shows up as a difference in the feeling of pastness. Specifically, the feeling of pastness in waking episodic recall is nonimmersive, while the feeling of pastness in dreams is immersive. I thus propose that functional states of remembering always manifest themselves phenomenally with a nonimmersive feeling of pastness. Along the way I also discuss some of the neurobiology involved and what this proposal means for the neural correlates of spatiotemporal awareness. -- https://www.vidal-rosset.net/mailing_list_educasupphilo.html
